Posts Tagged ‘desserts’

One of the more popular brunch places in the East has got to be Penny University. It was a pretty small cafe though, which probably explained for the long waiting list.

Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon

For $12, the Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon was definitely worth every penny! There was a decent serving of poached eggs and smoked salmon, atop the sourdough toasts. The homemade hollandaise sauce was smooth, rich and slightly buttery. The poached eggs were bit undercooked though, with the egg whites a tad too raw. The smoked salmon wasn’t too salty. The thin slices easily disintegrated in our mouths. The sourdough toasts were fluffy, not too starchy or heavy. Due to the thin layer of jam, it was more towards being sweet than sour.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The Flourless Chocolate Cake ($8.50) was very dense and packed full of chocolately goodness. The crust was very crumbly and generously dusted and covered with cocoa powder. The chocolate cake was akin to a slab of chocolate fudge. Decadent, smooth and bitter sweet chocolate to satisfy the chocoholics in us.

Everton Park has slowly evolved into a mini patisserie and coffee neighbourhood, with Audacious Cakery joining its community.

Audacious Cakery

Matcha Cupcake

The Matcha Cupcake ($3.50) was possibly one of the best cupcakes we have tried. The Matcha Italian meringue buttercream wasn’t overly sweet or oily. It had a smooth and creamy texture, while exuding a rich green tea taste. This was supported by a strong, full-bodied and moist green tea cake. Every mouth was dense and rich matcha goodness. A simple cupcake at its best.

Foret Noir

The Foret Noir ($9.80) paled in comparison as it lacked a strong chocolately richness. We also didn’t quite like the gelatine-like rubbery texture of the outer coating. The cherries were probably the star of the cake – plump juicy cherries, which had been thoroughly soaked in Kirsh, exploded with flavours when we bit into them. Other than that, the Foret Noir seemed rather over-rated.

As the print on the window goes, Drips Bakery Cafe specializes in tarts – tarts which are freshly made every day!

Chocolate de Tart

The Chocolate de Tart was pretty decent. The inner chocolate filling was decadent, rich and very smooth. Taste wise, it maintained a mellow bitter-sweetness. This simple tart hit all the right notes but perhaps the fact that it was too predictable, this tart seemed a tad boring.

Macadamia Nuts

We just couldn’t resist the sight of these large macadamia nuts! The nuts were basically the limelight of this tart. They were extremely fresh, crunchy and fragrant – every nut lover’s Achilles’s heel! The macadamia nuts were held together by a sticky caramel glue, which wasn’t too sweet. The cake beneath was pretty bland as well. And in all, it seemed that every thing else was just a sidekick, while the star of the tart was solely the huge tantalizing macadamia nuts!

Widely touted as Hong Kong’s most famous dim sum, Tim Ho Wan has never failed to draw long crowds outside their 2 branches since the first outlet opening in March 2013 and its second outlet in September 2013. We are definitely attracted to the Michelin-backed good food, but with mixed reviews about the Singapore outlets not matching up to the Hong Kong’s standards, we stopped short of joining the horrendously long queues during the 1st couple of months of opening. And another way to escape the long queues is to visit the 2nd, off-town outlet outside of peak lunch and dinner times.

Tim Ho Wan

The menu isn’t very extensive and was presented simply on a single page. There aren’t many fanciful offerings, most of them were traditional dim sum fare.

Baked Bun with BBQ Pork 酥皮焗叉烧包

As we observed trays and trays of freshly baked BBQ pork buns being dished out from the ovens and almost every table having at least 1 serving of this, there was no doubt that the most popular dish was the Baked Bun with BBQ Pork 酥皮焗叉烧包 ($4.50 for 3). The buns were unique, and unlike any served in other dim sum restaurants. The crust was crumbly with a tinge of sweetness. The aroma of the freshly baked crumbly crust was irresistible. It wasn’t overly thick and doughy. The inner fillings of the BBQ pork wasn’t as likeable as the outer crust. The quantity of fillings wasn’t to our expectations. It was a bit too sweet as well. Texture wise, the proportion of meat seemed to be lacking, and there just wasn’t enough bite and meaty tenderness to it.

Pan Fried Carrot Cake 香煎萝卜糕

Another one of Tim Ho Wan’s Big 4 Heavenly Kings is the Pan Fried Carrot Cake 香煎萝卜糕 ($4.50 for 3). The searing on the carrot cake was adequately done – just enough to give it that extra crisp and charred flavours, without being overly burnt. The carrot cake seemed pretty soft though, as it was on the verge of disintegrating just be the mere pick up using chopsticks. And there wasn’t any dried shrimps or Chinese sausages embedded in the carrot cake – that was pretty disappointing as it made the carrot cake seemed one-dimensional and boring.

Vermicelli Roll with Pig’s Liver 黄沙猪润肠

One of the more unique items was the Vermicelli Roll with Pig’s Liver 黄沙猪润肠 ($5.50), since in Singapore, pig’s liver is not typically found in vermicelli rolls. The vermicelli roll was thin, semi-translucent, smooth and when immersed in the sauce, it was very fragrant and savoury. The fillings of pig’s liver wasn’t really our favourite, mainly due to the fact that we aren’t fans of pig’s livers to start off with. It had a queer texture and the characteristic taste of pig’s liver just didn’t go well with us.

Steam Spinach Dumpling with Shrimp 鲜虾菠菜饺

The Steam Spinach Dumpling with Shrimp 鲜虾菠菜饺 ($3.80 for 3) was pretty mediocre. The proportion of spinach was overwhelming and completely masked out any taste of prawns. It was just too much spinach and every mouth was just spinach leaves and stalks, which was just not appetizing given that the spinach was under-flavoured and the prawns were just non-existent.

Beancurd Skin Roll with Pork and Shrimp 美味燜鲜竹卷

The Beancurd Skin Roll with Pork and Shrimp 美味燜鲜竹卷 ($4 for 3) was a simple and comforting dish. The sauce was very thick and savoury. There was a good balance of pork and shrimp, with neither outshining the other. Fresh crunchy prawns with the sweet minced pork, tied together with a thin layer of beancurd skin, and drenched in a viscous thick sauce – nicely done.

Tonic Medlar and Osmanthus Cake 杞子桂花糕

The meal ended on a perfect note with a sweet and refreshing Tonic Medlar and Osmanthus Cake 杞子桂花糕 ($3.50 for 3). The jelly wasn’t too soft, was still bouncy and chewy. The wolfberries were almost like raisins, they added burst of sweetness to the jelly. The osmanthus fragrance and flavour formed the backdrop of this jelly. This cold dessert drew a perfect closure to an otherwise porky dim sum feast.

Hailing from New York City, Lady M makes its first debut in Singapore at Marina Square! Decked in a white-washed and spacious shop space, Lady M has been drawing a steady flow of crowd with its signature Mille Crêpe cake. Straying away from the mainstream folks, we skipped the Mille Crêpe and headed for another 2 cakes which appealed more to us.

Banana Mille Feuilles

Raspberry Chocolate

Banana Mille Feuilles ($8) – puff pastry, whipped cream with layers of vanilla sponge and bananas. Though the Banana Mille Feuilles looked overwhelmingly overladen with cream, the whipped cream turned out to be pretty light, surprisingly refreshing and not oily, and came with a tinge of sweetness. The soft airy cream, together with the slightly moist vanilla sponge, was a good complement to the fragrant, flaky puff pastry. And with the bananas adding the extra bite to the cake, this Banana Mille Feuilles was pretty unique and interesting.

Raspberry Chocolate ($7.50) – chocolate ganache layers with raspberry puree. The only chocolate cake on display for the day, the Raspberry Chocolate looked pretty nondescript and common to the rest of the cakes. But it did stand out as the only dark cake on display. The dark chocolate ganache was very rich, dense and sticky. The bitter-sweetness hit the right note, with the top raspberry glaze and raspberry puree within the cake providing sufficient acidity and sourness to cut through the richness of the chocolate. There were also bits of gianduja-laced feuilletine which added bursts of crunchiness to the cake. A decadent chocolate cake for the chocolate lover.

At price of $8.20 for 3, we had the Intense Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate Rum and Raisin as well as the seasonal White Chocolate Oreo.

The cores of the mini cakes weren’t as fluid-like and molten as we had imagined. In fact, a better description would be soft-core, not molten core. The White Chocolate Oreo didn’t really have a strong Oreo taste. The outer cake was rather soft, moist and heavy – almost reminiscent of Chinese kueh. Taste wise, there was a very rich buttery taste, nothing of white chocolate.

The Milk Chocolate Rum and Raisins were slightly more up to expectations. There was an evident, though faint, rum flavour. The juicy, rum-soaked raisins embedded within the cake provided additional burst of flavours and textures. However, the outer cake was pretty bland and lackluster.

The Intense Dark Chocolate was really intense. The strong bitterness from the 70% cocoa content hit us immediately at the 1st bite. The soft core was rich and definitely more molten-like compared to the previous two. Terms of taste and texture, the Intense Dark Chocolate hit all the right notes.

Brunch session at Strangers’ Reunion saw us trying the Baked Eggs in Shakshuka ($17). Shakshuka is a Tunisian/Moroccan dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, chili peppers, onions, and various spices. This dish was more soupy than we thought, as we had expected a thicker and more gooey gravy. The middle-easten origins were quite evident as the shakshuka was accentuated with lots of spices, with the sour tomato-based sauce forming the backdrop. The eggs were pretty raw – on the surface, the egg white seemed cooked, but within the soup, the egg white were still in its original raw colourless form. It seemed like the egg was only cracked and added onto the shakshuka after the dish was removed from the oven. Still, the soupy shakshuka did make an interesting middle-eastern flavoured dip for the accompanying bread.

Matcha Azuki

Be it brunch, lunch or dinner, we can never escape the temptations of having a cake to end our meal. The Matcha Azuki ($7.50) wasn’t too sweet though, as it exhibited the characteristic bitter green tea flavours. This cake consisted of alternating layers of matcha sponge and matcha cream. It was rather light, typical of a Japanese-inspired cake. The red beans embedded in the matcha cream provided that slight additional crunch and sweetness to the cake. Overall, there wasn’t much surprises to the cake – a straightforward matcha cake, everything that you can expect.

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Disclaimer

We do not aim to promote or discredit any restaurants/food places. This blog is solely an avenue to voice our personal and humble opinions of our food escapades. In no way can any content from our blog be used without our consent.